LOST & FOUND
Originally, our friend Rocky
had planned to join us. Rocky had
always wanted to see Virgin Falls.
Plus, Rocky is an expert Spelunker.
The Cumberland Plateau is riddled with caves. With Rocky, I thought we might take a day to explore a cave. Unfortunately, a week or so before the trip,
Rocky found out that he wouldn’t be able to join us. Christy and I were both disappointed, as we’d been looking
forward to his company.
Initially I scrapped our
cave-exploring plans. We didn’t really
have adequate caving gear. Plus,
navigating in a cave presents a whole new set of challenges. I rarely get lost in the woods, but in a
cave, you’re navigating in three dimensions.
The route out might be directly below you, or above you.
While I was researching our
trip, I found some information on Lost Creek Cave (aka Dodson Cave and Whites
Cave). It sounded like the cave was
easy to explore, but big enough to be interesting. Best of all, there’s really only one main passage, and it’s
large. It sounded like it would be hard
to get lost in there, and crawling wouldn’t be necessary. We decided to check it out.
We found our way to the cave
the next morning. It’s located off of
Whites Cave Road, southeast of Sparta.
Initially we missed the side road that accesses the cave, but when we
found ourselves driving above a large sinkhole across from Lost Creek Falls, we
knew we were there. We backtracked, and
parked at the trailhead, where a large group was car-camping. I was a little nervous, as this is apparently
private property, although it’s not posted.
Nobody challenged us though, so we headed down the trail into the
sinkhole.
We found the massive
entrance to the cave at the bottom of a steep hill. First though, we decided to check out Lost Creek Falls. We headed the other direction, through a dry
streambed, to the base of the falls.
Lost Creek Falls isn’t one you hear much about, but it’s quite
impressive. It’s listed at 60’ high,
but I thought it looked taller. Small
caves are found around the base of the falls, which Thao and I enjoyed
exploring. As it’s name implies, Lost
Creek disappears underground at the base of the falls. Our mission for the day was to find it.
After enjoying the falls, we
backtracked to the cave. We entered the
cave, armed with 5 flashlights, each equipped with fresh batteries, between
us. In hindsight, a few more lights
would’ve been a good idea. Generally,
every person entering a cave should have at least 2 sources of light, plus
spare batteries. We also didn’t have
helmets, which are considered standard caving equipment. I was hoping that we wouldn’t need them,
since the cave is advertised as having a very high ceiling. I reasoned that if the passage turned out to
be more difficult than expected, we could always turn around. Never mind that that sort of thinking has
gotten me into all kinds of trouble in the past.
We descended a rocky passage
before leveling off. We immediately
began turning to the right, and it wasn’t long before the light from the
entrance faded. Headlamps and
flashlights were turned on, and we proceeded deeper into the cave.
Thao had never been in a
cave before, but at this point, I didn’t expect it to faze her. This was also Saucony’s first cave. Bringing a dog into a cave is probably not a
good idea, but we hadn’t wanted to leave her in the car. The advertised easy nature of this cave
persuaded me to bring her along.
Saucony didn’t have a headlamp, but dogs have excellent night
vision. Well, they do when there aren’t
3 people waving flashlights around. I
noticed that she usually kept her distance from us, so she could see better.
I’m not sure what Saucony
thought of the cave, but Thao seemed fascinated. The cave doesn’t have any formations to speak of, but anytime
you’re deep underground, in total darkness, the experience is pretty
intense. Unfortunately, the cave is not
pristine. We noticed quite a bit of
spray paint vandalism. Much of it was a
least somewhat helpful, as it took the form of arrows pointing the way
out. Although the intentions behind
those signs may have been good, I still can’t support spray-painting the cave
walls. Some of the other vandalism was
less constructive. Anytime you see graffiti
depicting a naked woman, whether it’s on a bathroom stall or cave wall, you can
rest assured that the “artist” has never actually seen the subject of his
portrait.
The footing started out
rocky, but became smoother as we descended.
We were still going downhill gradually, and curving steadily to the
right. A bit later, we reached a
campsite (!) complete with a fire ring.
Whoever hauled wood into the cave to build a campfire ranks right up
there with the spray paint Picasso in my book.
Probably it was the same person.
We stopped near the campsite
for a break. We all sat down, and
somehow I managed to convince the women to turn off their lights. You haven’t really fully experienced a cave
until you’ve done it in complete darkness.
Then, I was able to convince them to be silent. After a few seconds, the complete darkness and
quiet set in. The only sound was the
distant dripping of water, and voices.
Voices? That hadn’t been part of
the plan. There were definitely voices,
and they were getting closer.
We turned our lights back
on, as we were in the middle of the path, and we didn’t want to scare the hell
out of somebody. Actually, just seeing
Saucony’s glowing green eyes might’ve done that! A couple minutes later, 2 guys passed by. We exchanged greetings, and I noticed that
they were wearing helmets.
We followed in their wake,
but were moving much more slowly than they were. A few minutes later, the dry streambed we were following
disappeared down a sink. To avoid it,
we had to climb up to a higher level.
This was easy, but Saucony didn’t like it. Ultimately Christy had to pick her up and lift her to the next
level.
We continued along a rock
face, with a small but steep drop off on our left. As we proceeded, the distant sound of rushing water grew
louder. Before long, the sound was a
roar of an underground waterfall. Then,
we reached a point where we could proceed no farther. We were rimmed out. Down
below, we spotted the lights of the two guys that had passed us earlier. Clearly we had missed a turn.
We backtracked, found a
handy neon orange arrow, and started down.
It was at this point that Saucony balked. It was a steep descent, but nothing terribly dramatic. Still, Saucony wanted nothing to do with
going down there. After a brief
discussion, we decided that I would go ahead with Thao to see the underground
waterfall. When we returned, I’d go
back down with Christy.
Thao and I scrambled down to
a steep drop off. We were debating the
best way down, when the 2 guys we’d seen earlier started climbing back up. They came up along the far left side of the
passage (if you’re facing downstream).
After they passed, we scrambled over there, and worked our way
down. This brought us within a few feet
of the falls. We rock hopped across the
creek, and explored downstream into another chamber. It might be possible to continue following the creek deeper into
the cave from here, but clearly we had pushed our luck far enough. We doubled-back, but worked our way closer
to the falls. The underground waterfall
is listed at 40’, but far all I know it could’ve been 4000’. It was hard to really see it, but we were
pretty much directly below it. The
spray was intense. We knew it was
there, from the roar. We had to shout
to one another to be heard.
In fact, the underground
waterfall is the same one we’d seen earlier, above ground. It merely continues falling below the
surface. The cave curves around in a
long descending spiral before reaching the falls. Of course, this part of the waterfall is a bit different than the
section above ground. If it’s going to
be treated as a separate waterfall, it needs a name. I suggest calling it Found Falls.
I made a comical attempt at
photographing Found Falls. I knew it
was hopeless, but decided to give it a shot anyway. Actually, you can get the same exact photo without ever setting
foot inside a cave. Start your washing
machine (I recommend cold water), set your camera for a long exposure, and turn
on the flash. Once the machine is full
and running, turn on the camera’s timer, press the shutter, toss it in, and
close the lid. One disclaimer – this
will probably work best with a waterproof camera.
Those photos were only
slightly worse than the other photos I attempted in the total darkness of the
cave. My camera doesn’t seem to do well
in low-light (or no-light) situations.
Oh well.
A bit of scrambling returned
us to where Christy was waiting. I
filled her in on what she had missed, and she decided to skip it. We hiked out the same way, which was our only
real option. We didn’t have any problem
finding the way, although Christy managed to step in a deep pool of water on
the way out. Where did that come
from? We never even saw it on the way
in. It didn’t take long to reach the
entrance. When we arrived, the outside
light almost didn’t seem real. We
emerged into the mid-day chill, leaving the warmth of the cave behind.
Back to Tennessee
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Please remember to Leave No Trace!